Micro Sensor Network For Aerospace Applications

In military and commercial aircraft, airframe health is central to operating safety, maintenance costs, and aircraft availability. While thorough inspections provide the best means of assessing airframe health, they are expensive, time consuming, and can inflict new damage to the aircraft. Other methods of estimating airframe health, such as flight logs and service records, must be veryconservative to account for variations in operational loading and corrosion. Recently, researchers have been investigating embeddable sensors for real-time sensing of airframe strains, but their high cost and their requirement for composite structures render these systems impractical for near-term implementation. In this proposal, Sarcos Research Corporation (SRC) outlines a develoment effort for an airframe health monitoring system based on micro machined strain sensors. The system will monitor real-time fatigue and strain in both metallic and non-metallic structures. By using an innovative digital sensor developed by SRC previously, this system will measure the absolute strain at each sensing point, without the drift associated with conventional strain gages. Phase I will develop a system design that will include monolithic signal processing and mutliplexing to improve performance and greatly reduce wiring and weight requirements. Phase II will implement a prototype system of distributed strain sensors, and Phase III will focus on commercial development of the system. ANTICIPATED BENEFITS: The robust and versatile health monitoring system proposed will have immediate application in the military and commercial aircraft industry. Other areas where structural performance is critical, such as in naval vessels, space structures, bridges, and buildings, will also benefit from this development.